Political Scene: Assessing the Government Shutdown

We’re now nearly half a week into the government shutdown, and there’s no clear end in sight. But understanding how we got here can be helpful in seeing how we might eventually get out. As Ryan Lizza explains on this week’s Political Scene podcast, many of the underlying issues begin with John Boehner: “His speakership has basically been defined by having to mollify this Tea Party conference.” The problem now is that, without movement from President Obama and his fellow Democrats on defunding or repealing the Affordable Care Act, it’s not clear what might satisfy the Tea Party. And not getting anywhere, as James Surowiecki says, only raises the stakes—very soon, the government will risk breaching the debt ceiling, something that could pull the country back into a recession. “We really would be basically cutting our head off, I guess, to spite our face,” Surowiecki says.

Evan Osnos, who has just arrived in Washington after living in China, joins Lizza, Surowiecki, and host Dorothy Wickenden on the podcast. He notes: “I have to say that people who are looking at it from far away, I think, are struck most of all by one thing. … I think people are grappling with how it is that we’ve done this to ourselves.” So are we.